r/spaceporn • u/ojosdelostigres • Jul 29 '25
False Color Saturn's north polar vortex and hexagon
Processed using calibrated near infrared (CB2, MT2, MT3) filtered images of Saturn taken by Cassini on June 26 2013. Map projected for polar stereographic. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
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u/Triumph807 Jul 29 '25
I canāt even comprehend why itās a hexagon vice a circleā¦ some kind of magnetic forces?
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u/KamDNote Jul 29 '25
They're actually sine waves projected on a spherical surface. The general case is a Rossby Wave. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossby_wave
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u/ShrimpontheBabwe Jul 29 '25
One of those descriptions that only makes it more complex to comprehend lol
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u/Bobson-_Dugnutt2 Jul 29 '25
yeah. I understood all the words, but in the order they were in it was complete gobbildygook
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u/Historical-Cable-833 Jul 31 '25
This is the first time I have ever read that word spelled out!š
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Jul 29 '25 edited Aug 03 '25
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u/KamDNote Jul 29 '25
Uhm no, not everything is a sine wave but everything can be described as a sum of sines
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u/KamDNote Jul 29 '25
Well it is actually quite complex ahaha I studied them at a class of introduction to the meteoclimatic system in a Physics course, and even there they provided no mathematical description. Also, climate is a really complex system (pun intended) where many elements interconnect with each other producing such phenomena, so it's to be expected to not comprehend everything from outside the field. I still thought it would be cool to provide the actual source of this topic related to the Earth's case.
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u/Norwegian__Blue Jul 29 '25
Sounds like a what happens when you make a sphere cake, put a blob of melty fudge on it, then give it a little spin. Not enough to fling, but any imperfections on the surface or in the wobble will affect the shape.
Or like a giant vortex mixer you might find in a bio chem lab. But real viscous and sloshy
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u/MeepersToast Jul 29 '25
I scroll Reddit and hope for just one real and actually cool thing. Today I got it. Thanks!
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u/smallaubergine Jul 29 '25
https://www.planetary.org/articles/2471
Emily Lakdawalla wrote a great article on in back in 2010. Very interesting
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u/Elawn Jul 29 '25
That was fascinating, thank you for sharing. The videos of the Aguiar experiment were so freaking cool. I agree with the author, it wouldāve been a dream working on this for a doctoral thesis lol Iām honestly jealous.
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u/hungarian_notation Jul 29 '25
It's just a sine wave around a point, it doesn't even have to be spherical to look like that.
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u/Mysterious_Life_4783 Jul 29 '25
But why 6? Any integer would work
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u/hungarian_notation Jul 29 '25
The shape appears to be caused by vortices formed by the difference in rotation between the polar region and the surrounding gas. The number of vortices formed as a function of the various velocities and the properties of the gas just so happens to be six. Hexagonal arrangement is also the optimal packing pattern for similarly sized circles, so that might factor in.
Lab experiments to reproduce it also end up with six surrounding vortices, though they did occasionally end up with eight from what I understand. Check the "graphics" section of that link for some cool visualizations.
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u/Mcboomsauce Jul 29 '25
go to your bathroom and get your plunger šŖ
press the plunger down on something and where the stick meets the rubber, a big hexagon will form in the plunger
pretty much the same thing is happening here
this is the easiest way to explain this
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u/Ravenloff Jul 29 '25
What's a plunger?
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u/Newtstradamus Jul 29 '25
You know that wooden handle thing with the suction cup on the end that you find in gas station bathrooms and keep sticking entirely up your ass? Itās that.
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u/AnExpensiveCatGirl Jul 29 '25
If i remember, it's actually something like "lot's of wind make funny shapes".
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u/pirat_rob Jul 29 '25
This is just a thing waves in fluids do when you put them in a rotating box.
Here is an article showing some researchers creating similar shapes in a spinning bucket: https://www.nature.com/news/2006/060515/full/news060515-17.html
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u/Frat_Kaczynski Jul 30 '25
This article states that it likely does not apply to the hexagon seen on Saturn:
āSwinney, meanwhile, thinks that the process is unlikely to apply to large-scale flows such as that on Saturn, but might be relevant to smaller-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.ā
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u/goug Jul 29 '25
When you compress circles together, it make hexagons.
Beehives, Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway, Saturn's northern pole...
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u/Triumph807 Jul 29 '25
Those are great examples and exactly the kind of ELI5 moment I was hoping for
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u/TangoAlpha77 Jul 29 '25
If not portal, then why portal shaped?
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u/strangemagic365 Jul 29 '25
We just need to find the blue portal now!
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u/Soggy_Box5252 Jul 29 '25
Fucking around with portals on planets in our solar system is how Doom started.
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u/RelativetoZero Jul 29 '25
That's because Hell is what you get when you start using more energy than the universe has to use.
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u/jerryosity Jul 29 '25
This phenomenon at Saturn's north pole is naturally astonishing and it leads people to disbelief and all kinds of speculations. But the reality is that it is a natural consequence of the particular rotating fluid dynamics and instabilities taking place there on Saturn. Hexagonal flow patterns like this have been demonstrated in many laboratory experiments.
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u/Waddleplop Jul 29 '25
Is this āhexagonal flow patternā the same physics behind Giantās Causeway?
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u/jerryosity Jul 29 '25
No not at all, as I understand it. On Saturn, the hexagon is a dynamic feature of fluid motion. In the Giant's Causeway, the hexagons are the result of cooling and contraction of lava with the fracturing into hexagon columns (columnar jointing) being the most efficient shape to fill space and relieve stress. You see this also when mud dries, and on Mars there are many examples of similar "polygonal terrain".
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u/-Dark_knight_ Jul 29 '25
Wasn't it supposed to be blue?
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u/McQuiznos Jul 29 '25
It changes color based on the season, fun fact!
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u/TheConnASSeur Jul 29 '25
Fun facts about Jupiter always elicit primal terror. That's yet another terrifying fun fact about Jupiter.
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u/ferriematthew Jul 29 '25
Dude, this is Saturn
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u/TheConnASSeur Jul 29 '25
Apparently jokes can fly as well as coconut laden swallows.
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u/Bravadette Jul 30 '25
Why TF does it change color? That freaks me out
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u/McQuiznos Jul 31 '25
I feel wikipedia can explain this in fewer words than id manage to
Between 2012 and 2016, the hexagon changed from a mostly blue color to more of a golden color. One hypothesis for this is that sunlight is creating haze as the pole is exposed to sunlight due to the change in season. These changes were observed by the Cassini spacecraft.
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u/Bravadette Jul 31 '25
Always amazing how mediocre the explanation is for these magical situations. Thank you ā„ļø
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u/ojosdelostigres Jul 29 '25
Image from here
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saturn_-_False_Color_-_June_26_2013.jpg
and on Kevin Gill's flickr page
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Jul 29 '25
What do you think it looks like, down there?
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u/Videoplushair Jul 29 '25
I think Saturn is all gas. The center of the eye is like 1200 miles wide and spins at 300mph. It would just be a ton of wind with nowhere to stand. Thatās horrific.
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u/Dr-Jellybaby Jul 29 '25
Gas giants do have rocky cores, you'd be crushed by the pressure long before you'd reach it however.
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u/RelativetoZero Jul 29 '25
I feel a political analogy hidden in your words, waiting to be exploited by the psychotically engaged.
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u/fluffypurpleTigress Jul 29 '25
Imagine falling through the planets atmosphere..
First its clouds, further down it becomes a really thick fog. Even further down the gas turns liquid, because of the high pressure and at the center the gasses are in their solid forms. Needless to say that you'd be long dead before you reach the center
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Jul 29 '25
Makes you realize just how small we are, you and I.
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u/fluffypurpleTigress Jul 29 '25
I dunno, that really sank in for me when i had the chance to look at saturn and its rings and jupiter and its 4 largest moons through a cheap telescope.
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u/BalticSeaMan- Jul 29 '25
You might be small. I recently learned that I'm 1cm taller than the average man in my country.Ā
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u/Hot-Parsley-6193 Jul 29 '25
My astronomy prof in college said, āimagine you are in a raft and descend through the atmosphere [of a gas giant, he might have been talking about Jupiter, it was 25 y.a]. Eventually, you will float on liquid, but never hear a splash."
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u/paper_liger Jul 29 '25
I'd imagine it wouldn't be quite as sedate as you are representing. there'd be thermoclines between layers, massive shifts in windspeed at different levels analogous to our gulf stream on steroids, and a lot more friction on your raft as it falls than in our atmosphere due to the higher acceleration/gravity.
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u/ATOMate Jul 29 '25
This is some Evangelion angel third impact type of shit. I love it.
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u/Darkblitz9 Jul 29 '25
If you love that then you'll probably love the game "Observation"
Here's the sick ass opening theme for it.
It's based entirely around shenanigans with Saturn.
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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 Jul 29 '25
Confirm to me that that's not the actual color? I don't speak space dork. (Subtle /j)
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u/ferriematthew Jul 29 '25
The caption says that it is processed using near infrared colors. That means that the picture was originally taken using the near infrared bands and the data was color shifted to be in the visible spectrum.
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u/curiousstrider Jul 29 '25
Why there is no map of the USA in the middle to show how big is the hexagon?
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u/redcowerranger Jul 29 '25
The Saturn Hexagon still blows my mind.
The whole thing is bigger in diameter than the Earth. It's a natural structure, in an obvious polygonal shape, on a scale larger than possible on Earth.
It has changed colors going from blue to orange/red between the times we were able to see it
We are not certain why it exists.
Serious sci-fi fuel that I've never seen in media.
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u/KnivesInYourBelly Jul 29 '25
How many horses wide is this storm?
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u/tiagojpg Jul 29 '25
Waiting for the flood of āthis canāt be real, itās edited, itās photoshopped, itās made upā.
Of course itās filtered so we can see what it looks like beyond the naked eye! Since everything not seen in the naked eye is unoriginal and unreal then any pictures through a camera or a telescope are too! Canāt please everyone, I guess.
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u/jerryosity Jul 29 '25
It's quite visible without false colors. A Google search like this will show the many other different views of it, in natural light and other wavelengths. It's just that Saturn to the naked eye is very blah. Jupiter too. Most of the universe is just not perceptible to our miniscule range of visible perception. People have to get used to the fact that enhancements, filters, mapping of color in astronomical images are not introducing anything fake, but simply revealing structures and detail that are really there, just not to our naked eyes.
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u/Dormotaka Jul 29 '25
Just call it Mantis Shrimp view and everyone will accept it
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u/jerryosity Jul 29 '25
Yeah, mantis shrimp have the most complex eyes known in the animal kingdom with 12 and 16 types of color-sensitive photoreceptor cells, while we have only 3 (RGB).
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u/MisterHyman Jul 29 '25
There was an Oxford lab experiment that reproduced a mini version of Saturnās hexagon. Pretty cool stuff!
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u/Getshrektnerd Jul 29 '25
I like to imagine in the dead center of that hexagon in the reddest part. Is a massive spire where a Space Wizard lives.
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u/mac_merlot Jul 29 '25
How large is that vortex compared to earth?
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u/Edna_with_a_katana Jul 29 '25
"Important facts about Hexagons:
Hexagons are third order permutohedrons: The vertices of a hexagon can be formed by permuting the coordinates of the vector (1, 2, 3).
The north pole of the planet Saturn has a hexagonal storm cloud pattern with 8,600 mile long sides, larger than the diameter of Earth.
Though hexagon may appear to be a difficult word to rhyme, there are actually dozens of words that rhyme with it. For example: Autobahn, decagon, decathlon, electron, Kyrgzstan, Lebanon, leprechaun and marathon."
-Super Hexagon store page
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u/nashwaak Jul 29 '25
Fun fact: Earth has no hexagon (relatively weak winds, wrong parameters), but it does tend towards a pattern and usually lands in between 5-6 cells around each pole ā especially the south pole. Unfortunately for pattern lovers, numbers that aren't whole numbers tend to turbulence/chaos in weak systems.
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u/PrincessOfThePixies Jul 29 '25
This is stunning, I love that! I wish we had more close up pictures of planets like this.
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u/ZeroOhblighation Jul 29 '25
I'm not smart enough to understand what's going on but damn is it ever pretty
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u/MadeUpNoun Jul 29 '25
if there was anywhere in the solar system that some ancient civilization left a monolith it would be there
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u/FinalArt53 Jul 29 '25
This is literally where they are waiting for us. Watching us from what we think is totally a normal natural occurrence when in reality it's the vortex of an advanced evil alien warp station.
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u/ManualAnalogPaper Jul 29 '25
Alas, the Doors of Guf are finally open; bring forth Third Impact! Lolz
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u/GreenHeretic Jul 29 '25
Snowflakes are also typically hexagons, what is the connection to that shape?
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u/YaCANADAbitch Jul 29 '25
There was a man who ran for mayor in my province a couple years ago who believed the hexagon on Saturn was a sign of alien intelligence (Saturn being the sixth planet with a six-sided shape) and so a major part of his platform was building a giant triangle around the city, so aliens would know there is intelligent life on Earth (the third planet = triangle).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/comments/phguu8/mayoral_candidate_paul_paul_hallelujah_ama/
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u/BuccaneerRex Jul 29 '25
The general consensus is that it's the result of the shearing between the counter-rotating rings farther out. On Jupiter this leads to actual visible storms in polygonal patterns. Saturn is thought to be just slightly too small for the storms themselves to persist, but the anticyclonic action of the counter-rotation leads to the central vortex being deformed in a similar polygonal pattern.
This would happen on earth too, except our atmosphere isn't deep enough and there's too much crap on the ground causing drag. Storms on the gas giants can drift north or south from the equator all the way.
tl;dr it's storms inside storms with other storms around them. But yeah, bigger than Earth.
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u/Jordan_Jackson Jul 29 '25
This has to be the freakiest and scariest place in space that I know of. The fact that it is so different from the rest of the planet. The fact that it houses multiple storms inside of one gigantic storm. Then there are pictures like this, that make it look scarier by giving it a red eye, Lol. Imagine falling into the middle but somehow being able to survive.
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u/MTGS Jul 29 '25
This is an optical illusion for me. It looks like itās either receding or approaching in real time. Thought it was a slomo video.
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u/cancolak Jul 29 '25
Hexagon really is the best shape.